“I think,” the letter ran, “you were sufficiently interested in the story I told you some week or two ago about one Hernando Courtney, not to be bored by a note on the same subject.  Last night I accompanied my daughter and son-in-law to the Lyceum Theatre.  On coming out we had to walk down Wellington Street into the Strand to find our carriage, and in the surging crowd about there I am almost sure I saw the Hernando Courtney whom I believed to be dead.  Aut Courtney aut Diabolus. I have never heard satisfactory evidence of his death, and I should very much like to know if he is really still alive and in London.  It has occurred to me that, considering the intimacy of yourself and your family with the gentleman who was made known to me at your mother’s house by the name of Courtney, you may have heard by now the rights of the case.  If you have any news, I shall be glad to share it with you."

Considering this in association with the absence of Julius, Lefevre found his wits becoming involved in a puzzle.  He could not settle to work, so he put on overcoat and hat, and sallied out again.  He had no fixed purpose:  he only felt the necessity of motion to resolve himself back into his normal calm.  The air was keen from the east.  May, which had opened with such wanton warmth and seductiveness, turned a cold shoulder on the world as she took herself off.  It was long since he had indulged in an evening walk in the lamp-lit streets, so he stepped out eastward against the shrewd wind.  Insensibly his attention forsook the busy and anxious present, and slipped back to the days of golden and romantic youth, when the crowded nocturnal streets were full of the mystery of life.  He recalled the sensations of those days—­the sharp doubts of self, the frequent strong desires to drink deep of all that life had to offer, and the painful recoils from temptation, which he felt would ruin, if yielded to, his hope of himself, and his ambition of filling a worthy place among men.

Thus musing, he walked on, taking, without noting it, the most frequented turnings, and soon he found himself in the Strand.  It was that middle time of evening, after the theatres and restaurants have sucked in their crowds, when the frequenters of the streets have some reserve in their vivacity, before reckless roisterers have begun to taste the lees of pleasure, and to shout and jostle on the pavements.  He was walking on the side of the way next the river, when, near the Adelphi, he became aware of a man before him, wearing a slouch-hat and a greatcoat—­a man who appeared to choose the densest part of the throng, to prefer to be rubbed against and hustled rather than not.  There was something about the man which held Lefevre’s attention and roused his curiosity—­something in the swing of his gait and the set of his shoulders.  The man, too, seemed urged on by a singular haste, which permitted him to be the slowest and easiest of passengers in